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FACTORS AFFECTING RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING IN MANDARIN
by
Fuyun Wu
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LINGUISTICS)
August 2009
Copyright 2009 Fuyun Wu

Current models of sentence processing make contrasting predictions regarding the processing of head-final relative clauses (RCs) in Chinese, but existing research has found mixed results. It is not yet clear (i) whether subject-extracted RCs are easier to process than object-extracted RCs; and (ii) whether classifiers in a dislocated position before the RC can facilitate processing. This dissertation investigates how extraction site, animacy configuration, and classifier positioning guide real-time parsing of Chinese RCs. Assuming a correlation between frequency of occurrence and ease of processing, I analyzed the frequency pattern of these factors in the Chinese Treebank 5.0 corpus, then formulated and experimentally tested hypotheses to account for the patterns observed.; Chapter 1 and 2 introduce the issues and review the relevant literature. Chapter 3 presents a corpus analysis, focusing on extraction type (subject-extracted vs. object-extracted) and animacy of the head and embedded nouns. The results show that subject-extracted RCs are more frequent than object-extracted RCs and suggest three Animacy Preference Constraints (APCs): (i) head nouns that are RC subjects tend to be animate; (ii) head nouns that are RC objects tend to be inanimate; (iii) in both cases, the animacy of the head and embedded nouns tend to contrast.; Chapter 4 presents three self-paced reading experiments to test whether the hypothesized APCs influence ease of RC parsing. The results show that animacy configurations modulate the processing load induced by Chinese RCs: subject-extracted RCs are easier to process than object-extracted RCs when the animacy configuration is inversely contrastive (i.e., RC subject = inanimate, RC object = animate).; Chapter 5 focuses on classifiers as possible cues for upcoming RCs. The corpus reveals an asymmetrical pattern of classifier distribution in subject-extracted and object-extracted RCs. I propose two processing principles related to anticipatory processing and lexical access. These principles are supported by one eye-tracking and two reading-time experiments. Results suggest that pre-RC classifiers help the human parsing system identify head-final RC structures efficiently.; I consider the findings in light of four major theoretical accounts, and suggest that the parsing of Chinese RCs best fits the probabilistic, expectation-based constraint-satisfaction model.

FACTORS AFFECTING RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING IN MANDARIN
by
Fuyun Wu
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LINGUISTICS)
August 2009
Copyright 2009 Fuyun Wu